Handmade Sweets

Some of the most eye-catching photos floating around social media these days include non-edible items made edible. People are fascinated by the ability to turn a regular item into cake! As a cake decorator, it is so fabulously satisfying to have someone say, “I can’t believe that is cake!”

However, when I hear comments such as these, it is usually regarding the smoothness of my fondant or the sharpness of my buttercream edges, as opposed to the realistic quality of my decorations or design. Admittedly, I am a round cake kind of girl. I love a gorgeous round cake with straight sides and sharp edges… tier after tier of traditionally beautiful cakes make me swoon.

But I have to admit… lately I’ve been eyeing the amazing designs of realistic and novelty cakes and wishing I could steal a little bit of that talent!

So… since I’m not the type of person to stay where I am and never move forward, I decided to step a little bit out of my comfort zone for my daughter’s third birthday cake this year. While I think traditionally classic cakes will always be my true love, I did enjoy a bit of carving, shaping and imitating real objects on this one!

My daughter LOVES to color, so we went with a coloring theme! I decided to try to create a coloring book cake!

As I started to create, I got that familiar tingle of excitement and took the idea further, deciding to create a cake that she could actually color on. I found some fabulous printable coloring sheets created by SamanthaBDesign on Etsy and printed them with my edible printer.

And then I became even more ambitious and chose to create the crayon box out of cake as well!

As I was staring at the finished cake at 10:30 p.m. at night (because that’s how my own kids’ cakes always go), I knew that there was no possibility of me being satisfied with this cake if I did not create a couple of edible crayons to embellish the final product.

And then I knew I was done! I loved it! It did not come easy… me carving cake is nothing like those awesome videos you see on YouTube… more like a disaster of cake and frosting and the occasional sweat and tears. But when I finished my design, I was pretty pleased!

The best part was bringing my baby girl to her cake while her daddy covered her eyes, and then seeing her looking around confused and wondering where her cake was! She didn’t realize the coloring set in front of her was her cake! Once we pointed it out to her, she immediately tried to pick up one of the edible crayons to color!

In case you’re wondering, she did color her cake at the party (with edible markers). She loved every minute of it, even coloring so long that part of the cake started to get smooshed!

She wasn’t even sad when we cut into it, because… well… she loves cake. <3